Embed Generator alternative: YourBot vs Embed Generator

Embed Generator is a visual editor for Discord messages, free and open source. You design embeds, buttons and select menus with a preview that updates as you type, then send the message through a webhook or its bot, and saved messages can go out on a schedule. Sending once at a set time is free. A list of dates, repeats at intervals from minutes to months and cron expressions come with Premium, which also adds your own bot name and avatar. Each schedule has its own time zone that follows daylight saving time, can end on a date or after a number of sends and can edit one message in place or open a new forum post each run. A Calendar tab shows every upcoming send, Send test posts a message right away and a failed send shows why and when.

YourBot is one bot whose features are services. Ten are built in and run free on every server, and Scheduled Announcements is the one that covers Embed Generator's scheduling. The other nine include Sentinel moderation, Tickets and Analytics. Premium, billed per server, adds a bot under your own name, the open marketplace and the Plugin Builder.

The short version

• Pick Embed Generator if you want buttons or role menus on scheduled posts, repeats every few hours or a cron schedule, built in a visual editor.
• Pick YourBot if you want daily, weekly and monthly posts without a paid plan, in the same bot as moderation, tickets and the other services.
• If you run both for a while, schedule each post in only one of them, so nothing goes out twice.

Writing the post

Embed Generator schedules saved messages from its editor, with embeds, images and buttons, so you can change a message later without touching its schedule. Buttons and select menus keep working in scheduled posts, including ones that hand out roles. Scheduled Announcements takes up to 2,000 characters of Discord markdown and up to 10 embeds pasted as JSON, with images by link. Its edit page draws the post as Discord will, with role names in their colours. Posts carry no buttons, menus or uploaded files. @everyone and @here stay off unless you turn them on for a post, and role mentions can be turned off for a post that should only carry the text.

Schedules and time zones

Embed Generator sends a message once for free. With Premium it sends on a list of dates, at intervals from minutes to months or on a cron expression, from a start date you pick. Times follow the time zone you choose for each schedule through daylight saving changes, and a schedule can end on a date or after a number of sends. Scheduled Announcements posts once at an exact minute, or daily, weekly on any set of weekdays or monthly on a day of the month or the last day, all free. Each post has its own time zone, which starts as your server's, so 9 am on Monday means 9 am in the zone you chose. A series can stop at an end date, after a number of posts or both. There is no yearly schedule and no every-N-days interval.

Running the queue

Embed Generator's list shows each scheduled message as active, paused, ended or stopped with its next send, and its Calendar tab shows every upcoming send of the server. Saving checks the message for mistakes, and Send test posts it to the channel right away. If a send fails it shows why and when, and if Discord rejects a post, for example because its channel was deleted, the schedule stops instead of retrying forever.

Scheduled Announcements puts every upcoming post on a month calendar, one-time and recurring posts in different colours, and a click on a day opens the form for that date. Pending and paused posts stay editable, and a post can be paused, resumed, cancelled or sent early. There is a live preview but no test send. Before each post the bot checks that the channel exists and that it can still post there. A deleted or locked channel is flagged, the owner is told once a day and the schedule is kept until you point it at a working channel. A slot missed while the bot was offline goes out once at the next check.

Switching

Rebuild each scheduled message as an announcement: write the text, paste any embeds as JSON in the Embeds field, then pick the channel, the time zone and the repeat. Pause the same message's schedule in Embed Generator before its next send, so each post goes out once. Posts that need buttons or select menus can stay on Embed Generator. Pricing has the current terms, and the announcement bots table sets Scheduled Announcements beside MEE6, Carl-bot and Embed Generator.